News

The CCA Voice: "Filling the Right Network Coverage Gaps and Improving Customer Experiences"

October 23rd, 2017

by Chip StrangeVP, Strategy & Business Development, Mosaik

Anyone – which in today’s hyper-connected world is just about everyone – that has used a wireless service has experienced a dreaded coverage or performance hole. The very nature of modern mobile network utilization means that by just looking at a carrier’s coverage map, we may or may not see or understand the “hole” story.

We all know that wireless carriers compete for customers – whether that customer is a teenager watching video-on-demand or an enterprise using the networks to support its daily operations – and rely on those recurring fees to stay profitable. Keep customers happy and they’re likely to stay. If they’re not happy, there are plenty of other carriers and MVNOs vying for their business.

This means that customer satisfaction and quality of experience (QoE) can play a big role in a carrier’s success. Carriers need to balance their marketing, customer retention and CAPEX expectations with empirical network experience data to ensure they keep customers happy and onboard.

Improving Network Quality with New Datasets

Carriers use modeling software – augmented with variables like antenna configuration, topography and morphology – when creating traditional network coverage maps. Additionally, data such as signal power, radio noise and other variables are fed back into the software to tune the model for accuracy. This is a vital part of the engineering process, but it’s an expensive and time-consuming undertaking that doesn’t consider more real-time data from the entire network or the whole customer experience. Yet, these details have become more important than ever.

Given smartphone saturation, increased reliance on online education, and the growth of connected services for things like patient monitoring, agriculture, and remote monitoring of critical infrastructure, reliable access to mobile broadband is now critical to Americans' daily lives. So, how can we get better coverage information into the hands of the engineering and network performance teams?

Start with public policy, which the FCC, Congress and the industry agree requires more granular information to make better decisions. With that in mind and with the FCC set to dole out $4.53 billion over the next decade through its Mobility Fund Phase II, they put out the call that more improved, granular data is needed to make better decisions on where that money goes.

The FCC has also released a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to improve its Form 477 datasets, seeking comment on, among other things, supplementing traditional propagation models with ‘on-the-ground’ network performance data that represents true customer experiences. Although details are still being finalized as of the date of this publication, there is a ground-swell of interest in innovating how we think about coverage information.

Innovation Drives Better Customer Experiences

There's a lot at stake, especially when we are talking about limited subscriber growth, billions of dollars in infrastructure spend, and tightening budgets everywhere. To improve their understanding of customer experiences, carriers can now benefit from collecting data directly from the devices. It allows them to explore empirical network availability and performance intel as a supplement to data coming from the network, and potentially find a replacement of high cost traditional drive testing.

Augmenting traditional carrier network intelligence with device-based data not only uncovers potential short-term quality issues, but can help close coverage gaps through national infrastructure investments.

Wireless networks, mobile devices, and the sheer volume of connected things have dramatically changed the telecommunications industry over the last 30 years. Carriers must continue to keep their foot on the pedal of innovation, while working with policy makers to ensure consumers of the future have reliable access to high-quality wireless connectivity. Adding customer and network experience data into the carrier consciousness will add value throughout each organization.